Current Status of Exemption Requests for Employer Mandates
Posted on October 20, 2021
We’re getting a huge volume of calls and emails on exemptions to employer mandates. This is the current general information we’ve been providing, which again, is general information. This is all based on federal law. State laws around the country may provide for different, possibly better, protections. We are currently on taking cases in West Virginia. If you’re in Kentucky, you should contact Attorney Chris Wiest, from whom I hijacked some of the below Q&As.
1. Exemption requests: Yes, you need to submit the requests to trigger legal protections. The only legal exemptions are for medical or religious exemptions. Yes, you need to make the request even if your employer says they are not taking or accepting them. Yes you should do so even if your employer is requiring a pastor note and you cannot get one. The buzz word is that you have a “sincerely held religious belief.” You should document the what and why of that belief. The employer can require you to answer questions about the request to determine if it is sincere. Including asking questions about prior vaccines (if your request is based on aborted fetal cells, be prepared to answer the question on your having received prior vaccines — and answering it that you didn’t know when you received them but now do is an acceptable answer).
You can learn more about the basis for a religious exception, based on the Thomas More Society litigation in New York, here:
https://thecivilrightslawyer.com/2021/09/25/religious-exemptions-for-vaccines-under-title-7-and-private-employers-in-the-health-care-field/You can learn more about the issue of whether an employer gets to question your religious beliefs here:
https://thecivilrightslawyer.com/2021/10/07/employers-do-not-get-to-define-religion-in-exemption-applications/ ...
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